US, Our Energy Use, Sources &
Restructuring
Fine Tuning The Image
| with its cold and winter cloudiness can economically get their winter heat from solar... simply harvested in the summer... PAHS, Passive Annual Heat Storing |
Beginning with a summary of our target plans, we see:
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2006 | 2008 | 2010 | //////// | 2018 | 2020 |
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0.0 | 0.5 | 0.9 | //////// | 2.6 | 3.1 |
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0.1 | 0.3 | 0.8 | //////// | 2.1 | 2.1 |
We however realistically expect delays and fizzles. To model in an approximate fashion the impact of fizzles, we look at probabilities. Just about any convex distribution of chances with at least a 1-in-5 chance of making the target -- something not unreasonable -- gives somewhere between a little under 60% to about 80% as the expected rate of fizzles. To be conservative we'll use 50% for our TDP startup agenda for the initial four years, and a 66% for the e85/FFV agenda targets. We'll allow the growth rates from there on to take the middle between target value and the target growth rate, so that we eventually catch up since this has to be done eventually.
Now our agendas look like this:
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2006 | 2008 | 2010 | //////// | 2018 | 2020 |
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0.0 | 0.2 | 0.4 | //////// | 2.2 | 2.8 |
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0.1 | 0.2 | 0.5 | //////// | 1.6 | 1.8 |
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0.1 | 0.4 | 1.0 | //////// | 3.9 | 4.6 |
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0.0 | 0.5 | 0.9 | //////// | 2.6 | 3.1 |
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3.0 | 2.8 | 2.6 | //////// | 2.1 | 1.9 |
The margin at the beginning is vaporous or non-existent so far but remember this is a crunch-case 2006-PeakOil so wiggle room is precious little. If we were running 2008-PeakOil scenario, the expected delays and fizzles would be more favorable and we'd be ahead of the curve, something we would dearly wish for. No one wants to be under the gun trying to build decently for longterm prosperity.
Let's see whether we can expand that wiggleroom, pulling out more stops. Besides our total at 2020 is still way short of the 8.6BB/y that would be needed to completely support current per-person usage levels with a bare 1% population growth we have now, but we would be down to needing only 2.1BB/y of foreign oil. Something to celebrate.
We have yet to consider the scene in diesel, in home heating oil, and in the oil used to generate electric -- three substantive pools. Although the oil in electric generation is the smallest pool it is the most accessible for quick results. It just won't get us through at the longterm end.
Shutting down the oil-based electricity generators -- an option we could mobilize in short order, if their owners were willing because the oil shortage was making their operation difficult -- would save us another 0.1BB/y in the diagram of net energy use. But, because combustion as a source of power for generating electric is so inefficient without the co-generation design for heat utilization, we would actually save 0.2BB/y of oil, and yet require only a 3% reduction in electric use. Three percent seems approachable.
There are a myriad ways of saving electric. Easy ways, especially in all-electric homes. Judging from the results of a local survey of home energy use and the experience of a couple local energy managers, we could reduce our residential use of electric by 40% with just a few key strategies. We personally surely cut 40% from our electric bill, more in summer, in our own experimenting over 1995-99 and we can probably shorten others' search time with this list of what we found most productive:
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-- We set our thermostat back to 67degF in the winter and up to 77degF in the summer. To make this not only viable but actually more pleasant than the usual setting at 72degF is the adaptation of our wardrobes to more HollyHobbyesque or Chinese quilt/comforter designs. Hoods or knits, dancers' legwarmers, and even armwarmers. We found that sources of personal warmth were more significant to comfort than space warmth. In addition, your body experiences less stress and shock when you actually face the outdoor elements, summer or winter.
-- We cycle our water heater, turning it on only pre-bath time in the summer and twice a day in winter. Coasting the rest of the day has not been a problem.
-- We planted a mini orchard, plus a rapid growing mini forest, and we converted our landscaping to a naturescape. In the summer, there was an amazing drop in temperature just walking from the street side of the house into the backyard habitat. The landscaping also provided wind protection in the winter. Beyond the energy benefits, we had wildcrafted medicinal and food plants, and the delight of little critters making surprise appearances. Back then the plantings cost under $100.
-- Compact fluorescents are a bargain thanks to Walmart and Home Depot.
-- Our home was well insulated, relative to code, especially in the roof. And we had the benefit of lots of caulking and weatherstripping.
-- We also replaced our clothes dryer with a clothes rack and fan. Wind drying only required a little advance thought to have what you wanted ready when needed, though drying times in winter were not very long at all and added needed moisture to the house air.
-- We do more raw foods in the summer, maintaining a salad bar; bake more breads in the winter.
-- We advocate berming based on the garden apartment we lived in recently, even suggest investigating passive annual heat storing. Implementing that is probably not as immediate, nor was it needed to reach our 40%.
-- We will also be trying radiant heating this year, attempting to make it our primary people-zone heat, with standard convective electric heating set even lower. Radiant heat in the floor, puts most of the heat-effect in the lower levels of the room where we are instead of the upper levels of the room where convective heat stratifies, leaving occupants with less heat.
If all-electric homes can cut their electric use by 50% and all the rest aim for the non-heating score for 40%, we could shut down the oil based generators and eliminate the nukes, as well as open up capacity in the coal burners if the commercial and industrial segments weren't growing. But even if the commercial and industrial segments continue to grow at some nominal rate inspite of the constriction of oil supply and the economic turmoil, we can shut down the oil burners even if only residential users become active homes in the plan. Carter mobilized a wide segment of the US when it was needed, which suggests that the memory of old conservation strategies may yet serve when the 'new' oil crises calls it up. We also now have the additional incentive and leverage that a new generation of nukes -- now rearing their heads on government drawing boards -- no longer can swindle us with assurances that the waste won't end up in our backyards so even more enthusiasm for saving could be inspired and expected.
Examining the variables of interest -- namely how many of us cut our electric usage 40% -- just in the residential market yields scenarios like this:
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2006 | 2008 | 2010 | //////// | 2018 | 2020 |
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40% | 50% | 60% | //////// | 90% | 90% |
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30% | 40% | 50% | //////// | 50% | 50% |
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1320 | 1170 | 1063 | //////// | 727 | 727 |
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1250 | 1262 | 1275 | //////// | 1327 | 1340 |
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1530 | 1545 | 1561 | //////// | 1624 | 1640 |
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4100 | 3977 | 3898 | //////// | 3678 | 3708 |
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3% | 5% | 7% | //////// | 10% | 10% |
What the situation in commerce and industry would be is somewhat unknowable. We could speculate that they would be cautious in launching any growth projects except conservation and conversion. That would fit past performance. If those projects upped their electric consumption materially, not just 1% per year, and if there were no appreciable downsizing of whatever type to dampen the growth rate outside residential, the effects would still be damped by our agenda -- cutting a possible 5% ambition down to a 1% need --, making the highly risky and arduous launching of a nuke to meet the mere 1% need not feasible. Wind, in contrast,
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-- is launchable in short time frames, -- just a few months for each rural site fortuitously located near transmission lines
-- is more economical to operate, -- 3 to 6 cents per kWh for generation depending on the quality of the wind site
-- is scale-able, -- simply finding more sites to expand, or use the built-environment friendly, aero-sauvonius models for variable direction winds right where the need exists
-- has fewer risks -- the early sites were educational about avoiding migratory pathways, with no major risks emerging in many years of experience --
AND
-- can be located within short distances of the need -- wind surveys show quality sites near every major population center.
The 40% target however has other significant benefits. Not only does it give us leverage over the wiggle room initially, it gives us investment capital of our own. Investment capital we can use to upgrade our ability to cope with what's on the horizon. How much investment capital does that represent? A 40% savings on the average household electric usage would give each household roughly $400/year to supply the materials for the DIY agenda to make our homes sustainable through turmoil. Collectively that's about $16Billion/year in the hands of 40million households making changes. But we're not done eliminating waste and finding opportunities.
It's time to look at transportation diesel and at home heating oil.
With the progress made in recent years in making homes capable of sheltering their occupants with little more than passive solar, insulation and berming or storage, even in consistently cloudy and cold climates, why would there be any sense in persisting to burn precious oil? Surely it's bad design for a structure that's supposed to provide our families with shelter to instead actually make their wellbeing tenuous, especially when other designs would reliably provide the shelter promised. But we digress. What strategies do you have at your disposal and how do we figure the timetable for reduction in oil use?
Some of the same strategies discussed in conserving electric heat would help launch the conversion of oil heated homes -- and for that matter natural-gas heated homes as well since we've seen that depletion of natural gas though a little less immediate has an even steeper slope -- to solar, specifically the thermostat settings, the insulation, the weatherstripping/caulking and the landscaping.
Some homeowners have been experimenting in using the transportation diesel strategies -- and we'll discuss those in a moment -- but ultimately the only logical goal is to have our homes be invulnerable to vagaries in economics when it's basically a matter of good design. We will all be going that direction so opportunities will accumulate over time. Since the housing market will be more conscious of heating and cooling performance, and the average lifetime of current construction is mortgage length, it would seem appropriate to approximate the reductions in home heating oil with a long, sloping line extending out about 30 years.
With this strategy to make oil-heated homes secure, our list of agendas now looks like this:
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2006 | 2008 | 2010 | //////// | 2018 | 2020 |
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0.0 | 0.2 | 0.4 | //////// | 2.2 | 2.8 |
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0.1 | 0.2 | 0.5 | //////// | 1.6 | 1.8 |
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0.0 | 0.2 | 0.2 | //////// | 0.2 | 0.2 |
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0.0 | 0.1 | 0.1 | //////// | 0.2 | 0.2 |
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0.1 | 0.7 | 1.3 | //////// | 4.3 | 5.0 |
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0.0 | 0.5 | 0.9 | //////// | 2.6 | 3.1 |
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7.5 | 7.7 | 7.9 | //////// | 8.5 | 8.6 |
The shortfall situation is beginning to look salvageable, provided the oil-powered electicity generators are agreeable with our view. And our longterm petroleum use is nearly 2/3rds of the way solved. We've done some powering down but not in anyway extreme and we're more than halfway to our goal, though some of the implications of these agendas haven't been fully explored, only mentioned, such as agriculture's picture, to be figured out shortly.
But first we have the situation in the diesel market to wrap up for transportation and home heating oil, with a hint for the folks in construction.
There are a couple routes through the diesel maze that may prove useful. Among the contenders are several food-oil-derived fuels as well as the arrival of the high mpg european diesel cars in the US automotive marketplace. The names of the fuels in this game range from waste veggie oil (aka WVO) and biodiesel to biofuels and 'clean diesel'. To round out the cast of characters, the biodiesel comes in blends, from b2, b5, b20 to b50, b75 and b100, indicating the percentage of biodiesel to petrol in the blend. And just to complete the picture, our current diesel engines in the US run on one of two diesel fuels: street diesel or off-road diesel. The off-road diesel is the source of the major pollution that correlates with the prevalence of construction activity around big cities. Although much cleaner than off-road, the street diesel is distinctly not 'clean diesel' which is more than 90% cleaner.
For the record the european diesels average mpg performance rivals the gas-electric hybrids, Prius and Insight. Each one of these european diesels -- replacing one of our current vehicles -- would cut its driver's petroleum use in half. Although an FFV would have cut the driver's petroleum use down to 1/6th, the diesel would also be able to switch to biodiesel if that were available and cut its petroleum use further. The europeans just don't like our dirty diesel and have been waiting for us to get 'clean diesel'.
The story of 'clean diesel' is one of stonewalling and collusion. For the last 10 years, the EPA has played a curious little dance with the oil industry with the result that the deadline for big oil to begin producing the clean fuels -- those that Europe already insists on for their vehicles -- has repeatedly been postponed here due to claimed non-feasibility. European diesel car-makers with their high mpg engines have been waiting for this 'clean diesel' opening to bring their products here. Even our US automakers in their factories in Europe have somehow figured out how to supply the Europeans with high mpg diesels but somehow can't do it here. Judas multiplied.
While the big boys have been stonewalling, the davids have emerged. There's been progress on the small scale diesel manufacturing front, working from either waste veggie oil or a bulk supply of fresh food oil and producing either biodiesel or simply bio-fuel. For example, a diesel owner can set up a well designed mini-processor in their garage to convert WVO (waste veggie oil) to diesel for a cost of $0.50/gallon, producing 90 gallons for an hour's work. If the bigboys won't play, these small-time operators with mini-processors could be a base of local generation for relieving our farmers and our construction crews. WVO has the potential to immediately supply a savings by 2008 of 0.07BB/y with each mini-processor operator -- or a collaborator -- doing the sourcing for the WVO in their area, that being the only real obstacle.
With the high price of petro-diesel, the point seems to have come, where the possibility of working from bulk supplies of food oils -- instead of WVO -- becomes economically viable. At least one of the mini-processors' makers is offering guidance on doing exactly this. If trucker service areas were to invest in the equipment -- $6grand for a unit capable of producing roughly 100,000 gallons of diesel per yr from non-petrol-materials costing a little over $1/gallon. The fuels these mini-processors offer is not quite as enviro friendly as biodiesel, but quite close. In contrast, biodiesel, though a helpful contender, has some complications for our existing fleet.
Running current diesel engines on biodiesel has a few transition glitches. Bobcats, for example, may experience a 7% reduction in horsepower -- a couple horses in most bobcats -- plus a 15% increase in fuel required. Some other equipment models may have to replace some rubber hoses with viton but it wasn't mentioned for the bobcats however their maintenance schedules add another task to their 1000-hour-service list, hardly a reason to go without new fuel when the alternative is running dry. I've even seen signs in the tool catalogs for fuel handling equipment that's 'biodiesel ready'. But when the alternative is uncomplicated, as is the case with the diesel-from-corn-oil mini-processors, the biodiesel doesn't fly as well, except as part of a blend.
Local truck fleets and bus fleets may take that route, with their ability to manage their own fuel supplies and specialized mechanics. Cincinnati's Metro is currently running on b50 as of the spring of 2006, with plans to run on b75 this summer and b20 this winter (when the biodiesel is quicker to gel). There apparently is a credit or subsidy scheme that they have tapped into which makes this conversion workable for now already. How many others may be able and willing to tap this scheme and for how long is an unknown but for now the high cost of fuels is not going to cause the Metro to raise rates because of the biodiesel advantages. This opportunity also opens the door to changes in commuter behavior, also unknown but favorable for our conservative agendas.
There's an estimated 4 billion gallons of WVO produced each year in restaurants all over, which would replace 7% of our diesel fuel usage per year. For our array of plans, let's simply add the WVO processing agenda, which would require about 800 trucker service areas to invest a cumulative $5M to produce that .07BB/y by 2008. Even better would be for the Rural Electric Coops and the Rural Water Associations to install whatever processors -- diesel or even the modern ethanol stills -- to ensure service and control prices of basic necessities because they are in the areas where the raw materials are produced. The other diesel options could expand if the situation got out of hand on a large scale. Boycotts, embargos, or oilwell sabotage and climate disaster. At least the WVO agenda adds strength to our early efforts.
Also note that we should probably push TDP more on non-agricultural wastes, since several of our best partnering schemes, especially biodiesel and later ethanol from cellulosic waste, are putting pressure on the agricultural scene.
|
2006 | 2008 | 2010 | //////// | 2018 | 2020 |
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0.0 | 0.2 | 0.4 | //////// | 2.2 | 2.8 |
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0.1 | 0.2 | 0.5 | //////// | 1.6 | 1.8 |
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0.0 | 0.2 | 0.2 | //////// | 0.2 | 0.2 |
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0.0 | 0.1 | 0.1 | //////// | 0.2 | 0.2 |
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0.0 | 0.1 | 0.1 | //////// | 0.1 | 0.1 |
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0.1 | 0.8 | 1.4 | //////// | 4.4 | 5.1 |
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0.0 | 0.5 | 0.9 | //////// | 2.6 | 3.1 |
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7.5 | 7.7 | 7.9 | //////// | 8.5 | 8.6 |
Finally we come to the personal and immediate leverage we possess in transportation. When we drive, we may not be able to switch fuels tomorrow, but we can do what other transport providers do. We can increase our passenger-miles-per-gallon. We can put more miles on the car in our household that gets the best mileage and reserve the other one for special use, hauling or multiple needs. All of which adds emphasis to our role in the FFV agenda.
We promised we'd keep in mind the continuing vulnerability in our food sourcing. Is that pressure and economic change as horrible an outcome as the other peak oil strategy would have us believe? I plan to show that we can in fact benefit from putting this serious dent in our current food supply.
